


the seven stages of grief (how yixing learned to let go)

by everywordnotsaid



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-28 03:03:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6312799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everywordnotsaid/pseuds/everywordnotsaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief is the price we pay for love and Yixing is far past due.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One: Shock

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted to asianfanfics and with minor updates.

Grief jumps out at you when you’re least expecting it.  
Dominic Cooper

 

i.  
When Luhan had sat them down in the living room of their small apartment Yixing knew nothing good was going to come of it. The look on his face was too sad, too tired, too still for Luhan. And when he spoke the words he said shattered Yixing's world into a thousand shining pieces. 

“I’m leaving.”

Yixing stared, because he was sure that he had misheard that. Sure that Luhan didn’t mean it. And he looked to the others for reassurance, hoping to see in their eyes the disbelief he felt, but all he saw was sadness tinged with resignation and maybe even understanding. Even Chanyeol who was almost never without a smile on his face looked like he might start to cry. And as they sat the silence stretched on and on and Yixing wanted to scream and cry and beg Luhan not to go. But he didn't, didn't make a sound. Instead he stayed on the couch with his hands folded in his lap and tears glistening in his eyes while the other members stood and hugged Luhan, while they whispered comforting messages in his ear, Yixing sat because his world was crumbling around him and he was just trying to hold the pieces together.

ii.  
The night Luhan left was soft and small. The next day all hell broke lose. The company representatives instructing them not to speak to anybody about Luhan, the fans screaming for answers. Through it all Yixing was quiet and pale. Because Luhan was gone. And he realized he had never needed Luhan more then when he left. The irony made him want to cry.

iii.  
Yixing was numb. When he was thirteen he saw a butcher at the market cut off the tip of his index finger. He remembered he had stood frozen and horrified clutching his fathers hand as blood poured out of the wound and the butcher had kept on slicing, unaware of what he had done. Yixing had asked his father later why the man hadn’t felt anything. His father had knelt beside him and took his face in his hands told him that sometimes your brain can’t process what has happened, so you don’t feel any pain at all. Yixing had never understood that until Luhan left. He realized now that some wounds are too deep to be felt.

iiii.  
Luhan was like a hurricane. Because Luhan had been there one day and gone the next and he had torn apart Yixing’s life in the going. And through it all Yixing was silent. Because he had never expected this, and now that he was left to pick up the pieces he wasn’t sure he knew how.


	2. Chapter Two: Denial

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.  
C. S. Lewis

 

i.  
Yixing knew Luhan was coming back. Because he knew that Luhan still needed EXO, still needed him.

ii.  
Sometimes it felt like Luhan never left at all. Yixing would laugh at a joke and turn to Luhan to share it. He would find only quiet air. He would walk to his room to ask him a question about the new lyrics, only emptiness and the lingering scent of Luhan's cologne greeted him. Luhan had been a part of his life in a thousand little ways and only now did he realize what it felt like to miss him. Because you don’t think about the air you’re breathing. Not until it’s gone.

iii.  
Yixing waited each day for Luhan to call, to text, say that this was all a mistake. To say he was coming back. He never did. But Yixing waited every day. Because that was what Yixing did. Yixing was good at waiting. And at first Luhan did text, day after day he sent messages. I’m sorry, I miss you, how are things. On and on and Yixing didn’t reply to a single one. Because never once did Luhan say he was coming back. Because Luhan’s texts made it clear he was moving on, and Yixing wasn’t ready to let go just yet.


	3. Chapter Three: Anger

Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.  
Anne Hood

 

i.  
Sometimes Yixing hated Luhan. He hated him, he thinks, because he couldn’t survive without him and Luhan knew that and he had left anyway. But then they always did say that the line between love and hate was a thin one and Yixing was finding that to be true. Because even on the days that he hated Luhan the most his heart still ached with the need to see him again. He wondered if that made him weak or if it just made him in love.

ii.  
Yixing was furious when the members suggested cleaning Luhan’s room out. Furious because that meant that this was really happening, that this was real. Furious at them because they were starting to move on. Furious at himself because he couldn't let go. As everybody sat in the living room, somber and pale, Yixing screamed, “You guys are acting like he’s dead or something!” Each word leaving his was meant to draw blood because Yixing wanted to hurt someone, just so he wouldn’t have to feel this pain alone. Everybody was silent because Yixing never got angry, he never shouted. For a long time Yixing stood there, fists clenched and his heart a block of ice in his chest until Jongdae’s voice broke the silence.  
“He’s not dead Yixing. But…he’s not coming back either…”

iii.  
Yixing went for a long walk. It was late and the sky was dark and distant. He sat on a bench in a park and looked at the stars. He remembered when Luhan had sat beside him and looked at those stars and promised him forever.

iiii.  
sometimes he was afraid the anger would consume him, because it was so easy to give in to it. Easy to yell and glare and build glass walls around his heart. It was easy to push people away when all they wanted to do was help. Because anger was easy. Like fire it took and took and burned bright until it consumed everything around it. Yixing used to think that fire was beautiful. Now he thought it was rage.


	4. Chapter Four: Bargaining

Grief is a process, not a state  
Anne Grant

 

i.  
Somewhere along the line Yixing decided that if he just worked hard enough maybe Luhan would return. If he was just good enough, loud enough, if he was perfect then maybe Luhan would see him and remember all he left behind.So Yixing never stopped.

ii.  
Yixing craved memory like a heroin addict craves their next fix. He wanted-maybe he needed, but that thought was too frightening to face- to remember Luhan. Every little detail he used to think was so insignificant- the way his hair was one thousand different shades of brown, the curve of his throat when he threw his head back to laugh, the warmth in his eyes when he smiled at Yixing. And it hurt, it hurt to remember what he'd lost, but Yixing was like a child picking at a scab. He could never heal because he could never stop, but the pain was so sweet and he didn’t mind the scars.

iii.  
Once, Yixing was sure he saw Luhan leaving one of their concerts. It was just a glimpse, just the back of a light brown head walking down the street. But Yixing told himself he would know Luhan anywhere and he wanted so desperately to be Luhan. So he ran, pushing through pedestrians with breathy apologies and when he grabbed his shoulder he turned to reveal…not Luhan. He apologized profusely before returning to the van. He could see the worry in everybody’s eyes but he ignored it. Because he was afraid of how much he'd hoped, and how much he'd thought his hope would bring Luhan to him. 

iiii.  
Somewhere inside himself Yixing knew he'd sell his soul if he could, if it would mean getting Luhan get back.


	5. Chapter Five: Guilt

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.  
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

i.  
Sometimes Yixing would lie in bed late at night and wonder if this was his fault. After all he was Luhan’s best friend, wasn’t he supposed to notice these things? Shouldn’t he have seen Luhan growing thinner, sadder. Seen him crumple into himself and disappear to where he couldn't reach. And maybe if he had noticed he could have helped Lhan the way Luhan always helped him. Maybe he could have kept Luhan from leaving. But now Yixing would never know and he hated what ifs and deep in his heart there was a little part of him that knew it was his fault.

ii.  
He didn’t like going on the fancafe anymore because over and over he saw “why did Luhan leave?” and he couldn’t help but think "it was because I let him."

iii.  
Yixing felt like he was drowning. Like his guilt was clawing its way into his mouth and down his throat and curling like a sleeping dragon in his lungs. Nobody blamed him, and he couldn’t understand why. He spent every day waiting for the fingers to point and the accusing voices to sound in his ears. They never came, though, no matter how long he waited. And he wanted somebody to yell and scream. Wanted somebody to be angry with him the way he was angry with himself. But there was no anger in his friends eyes, just concern and he hated it because deep within himself he thought he didn't deserve it.


	6. Chapter Six

The thing about grief is that it’s a roller coaster – it’s up, it’s down. The emotions sometimes take over.  
Brent Sexton

 

i.  
Some days Yixing missed Luhan so much it felt like an ache in his side. Because life as an idol could really suck and sometimes Yixing just wanted to give up and go home and hide in his blankets like he used to when he was a kid. Luhan had made it okay. With little smiles and soft hands, he made it okay. He had reminded Yixing that tomorrow might be better then today. Without him Yixing didn’t see the point in getting up sometimes. And that should have scared him. It didn’t.

ii.  
Luhan’s smile was like a sunrise. It happened slowly then all at once. Yixing would look away for a second and when he looked back it was there, lighting Luhan’s whole face and he was never quite sure when it happened but he just knew he was glad it did. Yixing was like a plant and Luhan was the sun and everybody knew plants can’t survive without the sun. He wondered if he could survive without Luhan.

iii.  
Yixing’s world was black and white and Luhan was his color. Yixing was tired of seeing shades of grey. And sometimes Yixing felt like a he was rolling down a hill, faster and faster while the world blurred around him. And he tried to hold on, hold on to Jongdae’s silly grin, Baekyeols antics, to the fans and the music but each and every one slid through his fingers and he just kept falling and he couldn’t do anything but wait for the bottom anymore.


	7. Chapter Seven: Acceptance

Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.  
Anne Roiphe

 

i.  
Yixing hadn’t cried since Luhan left, not once. Because crying for Luhan meant admitting he was gone and Yixing couldn’t bring himself to do that. He had held desperately to the notion that maybe if Yixing didn’t mourn then Luhan would come back to him, that they could start all over again. Yixing realized now that Luhan was not coming back, and even if he did things would never be the same. Because they had both changed so much, too much and Yixing didn’t know how the pieces of their puzzle fit together anymore. He knew he could never be the Yixing he was before Luhan left again, and he didn’t know if he wanted to. He thought he had known Luhan, but he was learning he only knew a part of him and thought it was all of him. And he was learning he hadn’t known all of himself either, maybe it was time to. Because it frightened Yixing to think that he didn’t know who he was without Luhan.

ii.  
That night Yixing cried until every breath felt like broken glass, finally let himself feel the pain. That night Yixing mourned, for his best friend, for his brother. And when he woke up the next day, he didn’t.

iii.  
Somebody once said time takes away the grief of men. Yixing thought his grief would never end. It did.


	8. Chapter Eight: Hope

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.  
Arthur Miller

 

i.  
It happened nearly two months after Luhan had left, Yixing stopped falling to pieces and started picking them up. It wasn’t like one day Yixing still missed Luhan and the next he didn’t, because he would never stop missing Luhan. He realized that and he had accepted it and he almost was glad, because that meant he had had something worth missing. He had loved Luhan fiercely and completely, but now Yixing started loving himself again. He started doing things that made him happy again, getting up early to watch the sun rise, playing the guitar late at night to fill the silences in the air. And he as he did he realized he didn’t need Luhan to be okay.

ii.  
He went and apologized to his friends because he had been hurting, yes, but so had they and in his own pain he had ignored theirs. Suho squeezed his shoulder and smiled bright and wide. Kyungsoo gave him little nod and in his eyes Yixing saw forgiveness. Jongdae held him close and whispered in his ear “I missed you.” Tao of course burst into tears. Yixing laughed and hugged him tight. It felt good to laugh again, felt good to laugh without Luhan and Yixing thought he saw a brighter tomorrow.

iii.  
Luhan had never stopped texting him. Yes it slowed. One a day became one a week but he had never stopped, he never gave up. Yixing had never sent one message back. Yixing opened his phone to messages and tapped Luhan’s name. Slowly, carefully he typed out one word: Hello.


End file.
